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The company this week opened applications for developer kits for its newly-announced six degree of freedom (6DOF) controllers for the Vive Focus standalone headset. Viveport President Rikard Steiber launched the applications during a talk at the 2018 XRDC conference. He also confirmed that the new controllers achieve 6DOF tracking with the use of ultrasound and IMU sensor fusion and that Focus can track horizontal movements of up to 180 degrees and vertical movements of up to 140 degrees, all from up to one meter away.

Successful applicants will be granted two 6DOF controllers and a tracking attachment for the Focus as well as the necessary software tools. We don’t know how wide shipping will go just yet (although the application does allow you to enter pretty much any country) nor when the kits will start to roll out. You’ll have to provide an outline of what you intend to do with the controllers and if you intend to publish your completed work on Viveport.

These controllers are a big curiosity right now, as they should technically bring the Focus up to the same level of capability as the Oculus Quest standalone headset, which launches next year. Focus is still due to launch in the west this year, but we’re expecting it to arrive with the 3DOF motion controller that’s been shipping with units in China. We don’t know how much it will cost (though the Chinese price comes to around $600), nor what kind of cost these controllers will add on top.

With Halloween right around the corner, we felt like it was time to start rounding up some of the very best PSVR horror games and experiences out there. Ever since Sony’s headset launched back in late 2016, over two years ago, it’s become a go-to destination for some of the best and most terrifying VR horror games out there, even securing some high-profile exclusives.

For this list we’re focusing specifically on PSVR . You can read our full review of the headset here (we like it a lot) as well as our big, constantly updating list of the 9 best PSVR games here.

15 Best Oculus Go VR Horror Games and Experiences

The following experiences are all listed in alphabetical order:

Arizona Sunshine

Price: $39.99 (Store) (Our Review) (Dead Man DLC Review)

Review Synopsis:

Vertigo Games proved that even in the most saturated genre we’ve seen for VR games this year — shooters with zombies — there was still room for something fresh. Arizona Sunshine combines the narrative power of a fully-featured 4+ hour campaign mode, with the intensity of a wave-based horde mode, and then adds multiplayer to both experiences. The protagonist’s witty humor make it worth recommending on his charming personality alone, with enough depth and variety to keep people coming back for several hours. By doing so many things so well, Arizona Sunshine quickly rose to the top of the pack as the best overall zombie shooter we’ve seen yet in VR.

The Brookhaven Experiment

Price: $19.99 (Store) (Our Review)

Review Synopsis:

The Brookhaven Experiment builds on the foundation of its popular demo and establishes itself as one of the premiere VR zombie shooter experiences on the HTC Vive. It doesn’t have a deep or engaging narrative, but between the Campaign and Survival modes there is enough content to satisfy fans of all experience levels. The new maps, enemies, and weapons take what was an already scary game and cranks things up to a downright hair-raising degree of terror.

The Exorcist: Legion VR

Price: $29.99, Complete Series (Store) (Our Review)

Review Synopsis:

The Exorcist: Legion VR is without a doubt one of the best VR horror experiences available. The slow-building tension is expertly paced, each and every scare feels visceral and dangerous, and the sheer sense of terror you feel while methodically exploring the richly detailed environments is staggering. It honestly felt like I could hear the voices inside my own head and I could feel the heat from my crucifix as I stared down the faces of demon and eradicated the evil within. The Exorcist: Legion VR will turn even the most hardened horror fans into whimpering piles of fear.

Home Sweet Home

Price: $29.99 (Store) (Our Review)

Review Synopsis:

Like many VR titles, Home Sweet Home can at times feel like its VR mode is simply a tacked on bonus to an otherwise pretty entertaining game. Unlike other titles, however, Home Sweet Home manages to add enough to the mode to make it something that all PSVR owners should try out. Though it has its issues, the eerie atmosphere, incredible sound design, and surprisingly unique theme of the game make it one of the better horror

Community Download is a weekly discussion-focused articles series published every Monday in which we pose a single, core question to you all, our readers, in the spirit of fostering discussion and debate.

Halloween is fast-approaching this week and if you’re not too busy watching The Haunting of Hill House or re-watching Hocus Pocus for the 100th time, you might find some time in your schedule to send chills down your spine with a terrifying VR horror game or two.

We are still working on our lists of favorite VR horror titles, but you can already read about our picks for the standalone Oculus Go headset here. However, there are lots of great games out there for PSVR, Rift, Vive, Windows VR, and all of the other platforms as well.

So, thinking about the Halloween holidays and spooky season, we ask our community: What is your favorite VR horror game? Which moment sticks out to you as the most terrifying in that game? Why did it stick with you so much?

For me, it’s got to be Resident Evil 7 on PSVR. I’ll never forget the harrowing journey of playing that entire game in VR and how much it affected me. It’s full of hair-raising moments that got my adrenaline pumping. But with so many great VR horror titles over the past few years, such as The Exorcist: Legion VR, Paranormal Activity, Affected, and many others, it could be hard to pick.

The exclusive product release comes to Complex Con. Instead of waiting in long lines for the latest sneaker drop at streetwear convention ComplexCon this weekend, adidas Originals will let you shop in augmented reality. The two-day long convention is sure to see its fair share of top sneaker brands revealing new products, but adidas Originals’

A new experience produced by the BBC examines the personal repercussions of brain trauma from different perspectives. Is Anna OK? is a poignant VR experience based on a true story. Anna and Lauren are identical twins. For two decades these young women were as emotionally and psychologically close as two people can get. But, in one

Sixense CEO Amir Rubin sat down with me recently to discuss the current state of the STEM controller system — a project initially launched on Kickstarter back in 2013 — and the recent announcement that they’d be giving refunds to Kickstarter backers and pre-order customers.

Joining us for the conversation was Steve Hansted, Director of Business Development, who is in charge of the daunting task of managing the refund process. As previously reported, 2,383 Kickstarter backers have been contacted for Paypal information to receive a refund. Rubin also says that beyond the $600,000 in backer funds, there was more than $1 million worth of additional hardware pre-ordered from the website that will also be refunded. The process will take time, Rubin said, but some early backers who responded immediately to the refund email say they’ve already gotten a payment to their Paypal account.

“We will be giving all pre-order customers full refunds via PayPal,” Hansted wrote in a follow up email. “Over the years we have refunded pre-order customers when they requested one and we currently have approximately 500 left to process. We have received approximately 1550 replies with PayPal email addresses from Kickstarter backers and have processed over 1200 refunds. We hope to complete all refunds by the end of November, but we need the last 800 backers to respond with their PayPal email.”

Hansted suggested reaching out to steve@sixense.com for more information if you are a backer of the Sixense STEM Kickstarter or a pre-order customer.

As far as the STEM controller technology goes, Rubin and his team say they are focusing on enterprise hardware now.

If there’s one thing that everyone loves about going to the movies to watch the latest Pixar film, it’s got to be the shorts. These mini-movies that appear before the main feature are often filled with as much love, laughs and innovation as the film they’re shown in front of. Madrid Noir: Prologue brings those fuzzy feelings into a VR headset.

Produced by No Ghost and directed by James Castillo, Madrid Noir was awarded the Best Debut VR Experience prize at this year’s Raindance Film Festival, and it’s easy to see why. Though it offers only a taste of what will hopefully be a more fleshed out experience, I was utterly charmed by its short story, which introduces us to a private investigator named Manolo and his reluctantly-adopted dog, Paquita.

Madrid Noir Prologue – Teaser from No Ghost on Vimeo.

Speaking to UploadVR, No Ghost’s Lawrence Bennett explained that the film had be devised as a love letter to Castillo’s hometown of Madrid. “As a good friend of the studio James bought the character concepts and story pitch to No Ghost and we immediately fell in love with them,” Bennett said. “Having a shared background in animation we wanted to create something that featured high end and expressive character animation that could communicate the story without the need for narration or character voicing.”

And the Prologue is indeed expressive. Set in the lull of early evening, Manolo treks his way back to his apartment, berated by Paquita, who simply wants to play ball, at every turn. The detective’s weary eyes tell you all you need to know about the kind of day he’s had, as does his slumped body language. You can’t help but wince as Paquita starts to push his buttons as he drags himself around a 360-degree stage, which is beautifully realized as a virtual theater production.

I also can’t help but notice just how easy Madrid Noir is on the eyes. A mix of vibrant colors bring both scenes and characters to life with welcoming warmth. “No Ghost has a bit of a historical obsession with mixing 2D and 3D styles, and Madrid Noir was a perfect platform for that,” Bennett adds. “Creating shaders that appear hand painted and mixing them with realistic and volumetric lighting was key to realising this look.”

This is a VR production, though, and naturally I’m interested to hear what Bennett thinks the platform brings to the piece. “We had a simple story in our hands, and we felt that if we made it in 2D we wouldn’t be able to create such a strong relationship between the characters and the audience,” he explained. “Because you exist in the same world that they exist, anything that happens to them happens to you too and that’s a very special thing that VR can do that no other medium can.”

Rewatching the brief clip above, it’s certainly true that Madrid Noir has a more immediate impact in VR, though I’d like to see it go deeper. It’s fascinating to watch these characters

IMAX’s VR Centers are now down to just four locations following its most recent closure.

Variety last week confirmed that the company’s center at the AMC Kips Bay cinema in New York, which was the first location to launch inside a multiplex theater, had closed down. The location opened in June 2017 and was the second overall center to open in IMAX’s global rollout.

A statement issued to Variety reads: “With the launch of the IMAX VR pilot program our intention was to test a variety of different concepts and locations to determine which approaches work well. After a trial period with VR centers in multiplexes, we have decided to conclude the AMC Kips Bay 15 IMAX VR pilot run.”

IMAX’s VR Centers are essentially VR arcades that let people pay to experience titles like Beat Saber, Raw Data and Star Wars: Trials on Tatooine. The company had once planned to also offer cinematic VR content that would serve as companion pieces to current movie releases, though it also recently transpired that the company’s VR camera project with Google had been canceled too.

But this is far from the first closure for these VR centers. Back in August IMAX also shut down its other New York location as well as one in Shanghai, China. At the time, CEO Richard Gelfond stated that, while reaction to the centers had been positive, the “numbers just weren’t there.”

That leaves locations in Toronto, Los Angeles, Bangkok and Manchester open for now. We’ve reached out to IMAX to confirm if it intends to keep these centers open. That said, the company already shot down the possibility of opening more centers last week’s earnings call. “We’re not looking for new business projects,” said CFO Patrick McClymont. “We’re keenly focused on the core business. And that will be the approach for next year as well.”

Other location-based VR experiences are seeing some success, though. Dave and Busters recently labeled the launch of its Jurassic World VR experience as its biggest ever.